Thursday, August 16, 2007

Two German physicists claim to have made photons exceed light speed, thanks to a phenomenon known as quantum tunneling. The breakthrough was made during an experiment which used microwave photons and prisms.

The photons were mainly reflected back off a pair of prisms which were positioned with a gap in between but some 'tunneled' through and reached their destination at the same time as the reflected ones, despite having traveled a greater distance.

"For the time being, this is the only violation of special relativity that I know of." said one of the physicists, Dr Gunter Nimtz of the University of Koblenz.